Tag Archives | Gulf Oil Spill

Two years later, scientists say they have never seen anything like the creatures swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, Al Jazeera reports:

“I’ve never seen this,” he said, a statement Al Jazeera heard from every scientist, fisherman, and seafood processor we spoke with about the seafood deformities. Given that the Gulf of Mexico provides more than 40 per cent of all the seafood caught in the continental US, this phenomenon does not bode well for the region, or the country.

“The dispersants used in BP’s draconian experiment contain solvents, such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol. Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber,” Dr Riki Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist and Exxon Valdez survivor told Al Jazeera. “It should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known”.

The dispersants are known to be mutagenic, a disturbing fact that could be evidenced in the seafood deformities.

Lisa Margonelli of the New America Foundation Energy Policy discusses the psychology of oil and how it effects both our political policy and individual behavior. Did you know that oil pumps are consciously designed to look like ATMs?

The centerpiece of this month’s Vogue Italia is a 24-page fashion spread dedicated to the Gulf oil spill — that is, featuring models mimicking dying, oil-covered, beached animals. Nice as it is to see the fashion world engaging in real issues, spending thousands of dollars on a spread to sell luxury items to the rich may not be the most sensitive way of doing so. Via Refinery29:

There’s no denying that these images from the oil spill editorial in Vogue Italia’s August 2010 issue are beautiful. The 24 pages of Kristen McMenamy, shot by Steven Meisel, are realistic interpretations of images of injured, oiled animals that have inundated the news media since the Deepwater Horizon explosion in April. As beautiful and provocative as they are, we can’t help but feel uneasy. Creating beauty and glamour out of tragedy seems quite fucked up to us, not to mention wasteful and hypocritical, seeing as thousands of dollars of luxury clothing was flown in, and then subsequently ruined for the shoot.

Russia’s top scientists have informed their president that they expect toxic rain from the Gulf oil spill to destroy the eastern coast of the United States. They also believe that BP’s use of a chemical dispersal agent at the spill site is hiding just how bad the spill really is. Er, here’s hoping they’re wrong? From the EU Times:

A dire report prepared for President Medvedev by Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources is warning today that the British Petroleum (BP) oil and gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico is about to become the worst environmental catastrophe in all of human history threatening the entire eastern half of the North American continent with “total destruction”.

Russian scientists are basing their apocalyptic destruction assessment due to BP’s use of millions of gallons of the chemical dispersal agent known as Corexit 9500 which is being pumped directly into the leak of this wellhead over a mile under the Gulf of Mexico waters and designed, this report says, to keep hidden from the American public the full, and tragic, extent of this leak that is now estimated to be over 2.9 million gallons a day.

Who's the greatest victim of the "relatively tiny" oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? BP Ceo Tony Hayward explains that there's "no one who wants this thing over" more than he does, because, "I'd like my life back."

And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood.
Revelation 8:8, King James Bible

A summer of Hell is coming to the Gulf Coast. The situation grows more dire every passing day as BP continues to own their crime scene and fumbles their “Top Kill” solution. An astounding revelation was made thursday of a second giant plume of oil six miles wide and twenty-two miles long discovered by marine scientists from the University of South Florida. As of Friday, scientists in Louisiana discovered another vast plume of oil. BP has been trying to mask the extent of the damage it has done by spraying the toxic chemical dispersants to hide the oil under the surface of the water. Watch Phillippe Cousteau Jr.